Or, perhaps, too much DPS, if you want to look at it the other way around.
I spent quite a bit of time playing Warhammer Online over the weekend. A good chunk of it was spent in RvR scenarios, with some mixed results.
I started off with my Witch Hunter playing the Guns of Nordenwatch scenario. Here, Order was being trounced, losing 6-8 games for every win, if my experience is any indicator. And the reason was not hard to spot.
Chaos, when attacking, was always lead by a good number of tanks, usually Chosen but a Black Orc or two now and again, followed up by an array of DPS and some healers.
Order was generally charging in with a rank of Witch Hunters, augmented by Bright Wizards and a couple of Warrior Priests, an assault team with about as much damage mitigation as a plate of Jello-O. So the forces of Destruction really had to be off of their game to lose.
But Order was killing just enough people with all that DPS to make playing worthwhile. We were all getting enough renown to keep us coming back in the same numbers. Nobody seemed to be saying, “Screw this!”
Like many others, I imagine, I tired of the scenario long before I got tired of losing. Eventually I logged off.
When I came back, I rolled up an engineer. Yes, they are ugly, but I am enamored of the turrets they get to deploy.
Again, after some quests to get a bit of gear, I headed into the Dwarf/Greenskin RvR scenario and noticed something different. The scenario itself is very similar, but Destruction and Order seemed to be splitting wins about 50-50.
The dwarves did not seem that much more organized. They made the same mistakes, exactly the same mistakes, that The Empire was making it its scenario. The dwarf forces though contained a fair number of Ironbreakers, the Dwarf tank class. The class that can stand and absorb some damage. The class that is missing in the ranks of The Empire.
I do hope that Mythic gets moving on Knights of the Burning Sun, the tanking class for The Empire. I know it was pulled for the right reasons, but its absence is a sore point for The Empire. It appears to make a much bigger difference, contrary to what I thought would be the case, than the missing Dwarf DPS class, the Hammerer.
Meanwhile, I rolled up an Ironbreaker yesterday to bring over to The Empire side of the world.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
IBs give me fits out there.
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Was noticing this myself. With no native tank or healer, Empire groups suffer unless the Elves or the Dwarfs arrive with SM/AMs or IB/RPs.
As you point out, the Chaos selections have the bases covered with Chosen and Zealot.
After quite a few unfun runs there myself, I popped in with my RP for a quite a while. It seemed like with decent healing, a softer group of mostly WPs, BWs and WHs could do it. Add an IB or an SM and suddenly it became a lot more fun.
Didn’t run Khaine’s Embrace too much but that’s a mirror pairing with the DEs being light on the trinity. I wonder whether the DEs feel the same as Empire.
Frankly, I’m chalking it up to location and the cool factor. People will start figuring out how to visit the various T1s after a while. But I think Destro has two pretty cool tanks that people love to play, while order has the IB (pretty cool, great mechanic), the SM just doesn’t scream “FEAR ME”.
Just my $0.02.
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Luckily yesterday I had a run where we had swordmasters in each scenario. When we didnt we got rolled, but when we did I had my Warrior Priest and cuddled right up behind the tank and followed him into battle.
Oddly, Gates of Ekrund was devoid of iron breakers, as they seemed to all travel to the Empire land to level
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this seems to be a pretty universal problem, I would have to concur. I have tested on a number of servers.
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Order does need another tanking class. The Ironbreakers are good, but I wonder if a Warrior Priest could tank with the right ingredients, but maybe not because of the armor deficiency.
I had fun with three other Order players taking over the RvR territory. It is good that it is so easy to take over the four contested points in that first area.
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My experiences are similar in the tier 1 scenarios. In Nordenwatch, Order has very few tanks – maybe one will show up. A handful of Bright Wizards always make an appearrance (an average of 4), and a few Warrior Priests (who have no prayer of keeping the Bright Wizards alive). The inevitable mob of Destro tanks shrug off the damage thrown at them, quickly decimate the BWs, and win the scenario.
The Gates of Eckrund, however, presented a different problem. I was finding myself in warbands consisting of 6 Iron Breakers, and 3 to 4 Rune Priests. As impressive as their staying power is, they just couldn’t manage to kill anything. Sometimes, the IBs would win just by passively sitting on a flag for the whole game and refusing to die. It was a strange experience.
The mix of tanks, healers, and DPS didn’t start to hit a happy medium until I moved on to tier 2.
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On my war server in Eu we almost always loose to Order as they seem to be higher lvl for some reason. Except for this one scenario today where we won 500-0. That was really weird … The other guys didn’t get a single xp point ;).
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Oh btw enjoy the t1 scenarios, theyre much more fun than the t2 ones :(.
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Us dark elves on eerie downs are winning 4 out of 5 times in our tier 1 scenario and we also lack a tank.
But then again I haven’t seen that many swordmasters coming at me. A lot of the white lions and shadow warriors.
I have a feeling that destruction is better at target priority. Myself and a bunch of others instinctively pummel archmages into oblivion and then go after the dps, while order will attack the first red name they see.
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I guess it’s tough because no matter which way you slice it, somebody’s going to be missing something unless every race has access to tank, healer, melee dps and ranged dps… and most races have only 3 classes to choose from, meaning they’re gimped for something.
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Not enough tanks, and an imbalance between Horde and Alliance.. er…Order and Chaos.
Did they learn nothing from WoW?
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I recognize the Empire issue, but on my server Dwarfs owned gates of Ekrund due to tactical playing. Destruction Orcs you see tend to be all out offensive and forget to defend their standards.
I’d be quietly standing in a corner taking over their point and see 3-12 Orcs run past to jump into the central furball fight and not notice me until I’d actually captured the pole. When I had a Runepriest join me, we’d hold the pole indefinitely. So focused on that middle pole were the Orcs.
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I found another tank for the good of the Order. The High Elf Swordsman is based on the tank model, with protection skills and a tree (after level 11, of course). Not many High Elves made on my server, as I discovered.
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